


Keeping Count

by brevitas



Series: Love is Stronger Than Death [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Modern AU, Zombie AU, but they come into play later, it's just some headcanons, so you might like to read it?, this isn't really part of the series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 14:36:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brevitas/pseuds/brevitas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[a drabble based on the series]</p>
<p>They're human still, and all of them do what it takes to get to sleep at night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping Count

Each of them handle the body count in their own way.

Jehan composes a poem each time a zombie dies by his hand. They're sonnets, haikus, freeform, in iambic pentameter, crafted in the shape of a wilted flower, whatever he needs. Often they have nothing to do with the undead or the murder but they help, and his smiles come a little stronger afterward.

Grantaire used to make a notch on his rifle's barrel for each spent bullet but the tallies have migrated to his forearm now, and he has hundreds. They run the length from wrist to elbow and are puckered and endless; at night Grantaire traces them with a calloused thumb and struggles to remember as many faces as he can.

No one says anything about the alcohol he drinks because at least by the time he reaches the bottom his smiles warm his eyes.

Enjolras has a softer method, and one that went unnoticed for a long time. When he kills he betrays nothing, methodically cleaning a wet blade, but when he's alone he'll picture their face and think of what they might have had. He conceives beautiful stories for them, tragically romantic arcs, fables of lost children and empty castles. He writes nothing down but carries the number like a brand and taps it out against his palm when no one's looking.

Feuilly smokes a cigarette to each he kills, and purses his mouth to blow rings into the air. He says it doesn't bother him, and his eyes are certainly not as dark as the others, but they all know that when he gets his hands on paint he'll draw them unerringly, graffiting a town with faces long dead. It's a healing process for him, and he stubbornly forgets the total that his companions cling to.

Bahorel cares little for his rising sum. He was born violent and he is that now, a predator, thrilling to get his hands bloody and preferring the short blades everyone fears to use. He pretends it doesn't matter and they let him (but they've seen the way he takes care to ruin the faces of the dead, how he finishes that last swing that has no defined purpose, how he isn't satisfied until he cannot tell the fallen apart).

Combeferre is a scholar, and he notes everything as he always has. He carries a small journal everywhere and after a fight he scribbles down a short description; eye color, skin color, hair color, their mannerisms, what they were wearing. He doesn't have a reason to do this but he's obsessively detailed, and sometimes Grantaire will sketch one of them while they're on watch together, hunched over the notebook and drawing the lines with care.

Joly is a healer, and he was never made to inflict pain. He says nothing of it but they do their damnedest to keep him out of the fighting; the few times he _does_ have to take a life he does it with great compassion, transforming a murder into a mercy killing. He keeps the number close and incorporates it into his healing; twelve stitches for Bahorel when he splits his knuckles, twelve bandages for Feuilly when a burning zombie gets too close.

(No one compares scores, but all of them are grateful that his is the lowest by far.)

Bossuet surprised them all the first time he killed and seemed none the worse for wear. He is not a murderer but a _protector_ , and he doesn't have a problem drawing a line between the two. Incidently he always covers Joly when they're in a fight, and moves on from the bodies before he sees their faces (somehow it's less real when it's just a number).

Marius plants a flower for each life he takes and carries a bag of mixed seeds he's compiled from different flower shops. Courfeyrac and him sit together sometimes and he asks what Marius is up to and he sounds nonchalant when he says, "Four hundred and three." But the hoard sits heavily on his mind and the first was his eight-year-old neighbour with the golden hair and he still hasn't forgiven himself for her. (The others are just a mass of faceless guilt, as it's her he sees in his nightmares.)

Courfeyrac is as passionate in battle as he is in love, and his ferocity awed his friends the first time they saw the fervor. He says he does not know the number but he wears it as they all do, and hides it cleverly beneath gallows humor. When he thinks he's alone he'll mumble their monikers under his breath, just to remind himself that they existed at all; "Jeremey Renner look-alike, hipster dude with the dreads, lady in the pink dress," and so on, imagining their faces while he names them.

**Author's Note:**

> yes so just a wee drabble based on the LiSTD series  
> because I can and I thought it would be interesting to share
> 
> ALSO! this will come into play with other chapters so you might want to read it just so you kind of have a better grasp on an upcoming part
> 
> also seriously is 'graffiting' a word? how else to describe the act of making graffiti? I dunno, I kind of just kept it because I like it, no one shoot me if it's not real
> 
> kisses to all ya'll, you're beautiful!
> 
> tumblr is idfaciendumest is you'd like to follow/talk/whatnot


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